Published on 12, July, 2020
Our 29 month old baby boy who is the younger twin of two boys was recently told by a child psychiatrist that seems to be having Autistic behavior. After reading about it extensively over the last few days. It seems that even though he does not show severe condition, he probably is having autistic symptoms.
This is our story.
He used to be a normal boy (Dr later ridiculed saying every parent I meet with a autistic child say that they were normal before), I say this because he used proper words like mother, brother, here I am, let’s go (in our language) and he was trying to interact with his cousin who was just 6 months older than him. Sadly the twins were never really friends, younger one tried to get along with elder but the elder did not find that interesting.
Then came the TV and Videos. By the time they were 1 years old they got addicted to TV (not they … we are fully responsible for it) and they kept on watching the same program over and over again for a long long time. This is not the only thing they did, they did have lots of other activities, but lets just say that the “screens” were a big part of their life.
Towards late 1styear we started noticing that the younger one started losing words. He no longer said anything he used to say and started losing proper eye contact, did not fully respond to his name or stopped looking at things when we point at them. One other alarming point was he would fall and get his head knocked but he would not feel it.
By the way the other boy (elder twin) is just fine.
We first heard the word ‘autistic’ from his pediatrician, where she casually said that he seems to be showing autistic behavior. That was the first time we heard this word. By this time they had already started pre-school by 25 months (both together). This is more like play group than pre-school. Then by around the same time Dr mentioned the word ‘autistic’ the pre-school also wanted to let us know that they are observing some behavior related things about younger one. We were alarmed by this and we consulted a “speech therapist”. The first appointment was just me and not with the kid. I wanted to peacefully explain whats going on. She easily figured whats going on and stated that TV is a major concern and the fella is now living inside these TV shows (where as the elder is watching it for fun). And asked to remove the TV completely and bring him for an appointment in 2 weeks.
We completely removed the TV and moved them to normal play activities at home. Then we saw an amazing transformation, his eye contact improved tremendously, he started pointing at things, tried to say words, his mouth activated and started jabbering words but most were not very meaningful. All these were new. He even started back clapping which was lost and started to say “bye” (just waving and did not say bye the word).
Then we took him to the ‘speech therapist’ again after two weeks. And this time we took the baby too. She was glad to hear the progress. During this session the baby did stare at the Dr number of times and when we explained all what he does, she was convinced that he is a normal boy and not autistic. Gave 30 minute sessions to be help with him making sure we do eye contact, get down to his eye level, exposing him onto different surfaces etc. And of course NO TV and SCREENS.
We have seen this transformation at the beginning of 3rdmonth in their pre-school and at the end of the pre-school session, they called us and gave us what they observed in the younger one. It was everything we knew, but hearing it again from another person horrified us and we wanted to get a second opinion. (just to keep everyone reading understand, the pre-school did not get a chance to see the transformation that he went through, it was towards the last week the changes happened and on day before pre-school holidays he said “bye” for the very first time)
Anyway we went to see another Dr. (a child psychiatrist), she read the points given by the pre-school and observed the child. During this session with the Dr. he did some repetitive behavior so she was quite positive that he has signs of Autistic. But she was optimistic that something can be done because we brought him when he is just 29 months and the fact that he has shown serious improvement already during a short time.
Ever since this appointment, I started reading about Autism extensively and now I’m beginning to understand him better. He does very intelligent things, he spends lots of time making eye contact and he point at things and do lots of things. At the same time we do find so called ‘stimming’ activities and repetitive behaviors too. And of course many other little little things.
So this is our story and I’m hoping that others in this community can help me with my questions from time to time when they come up.